Clever copier

Citation

(2003), "Clever copier", Work Study, Vol. 52 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2003.07952aad.005

Clever copier

Clever copier

Xerox Corporation researchers have come up with a technique called Signature Analysis (SA) to help the company's office machines diagnose their own faults. SA works on unique, identifiable, analogue signals, such as vibration or noise or load, which characterise the status of motors and other electromechanical devices. Each part gives off a signal that is represented as a waveform. Comparing how that waveform looks when the part is healthy to when it's about to fail enables an assessment of life expectancy. SA started in heavy industry, where workers maintaining equipment such as electrical generating turbines and large industrial machinery used it as a diagnostic tool. In the mid-1990s, Xerox extended its use to smaller, less costly components of printers and copiers. Xerox researchers discovered that signature analysis could be used in its re-manufacturing operations to separate reusable components from those that needed to be reworked or scrapped, resulting in more reliable products and less material sent to landfill. Now the company is working with design engineers to incorporate signature analysis into future generations of Xerox systems, so that a machine can fully diagnose the state of its health. The result is less downtime and lower service costs because the engineers change components only when they need to, and not on the basis of the number of pages printed.